Elizabeth
by minaviolet44
Summary: Her name is Lizzy Winchester, and she will protect her new family. Drabble series.
1. Dying

It's more than a shock, being reborn. Of course, dying is just as much of a shock. For Susan Gardner, experiencing both put her in a state that made her wonder often it she was simply hallucinating.

Her death wasn't the simple painless death she had thought she would have. Fear of dying in her sleep lead to long nights of insomnia, but it turned out to be unfounded.

No, Susan Gardner died in fire, caused by an accident in the kitchen. She supposed it was just as well she lived alone. She didn't have any family, either—her parents had divorced long ago, her dad later dying of cancer and her mother going off the grid who knew where.

It was just as well she hadn't been a very good mother. Her father, she had truly loved, but it had been nearly ten years since his death, which had long dulled the pain, and he'd had the cancer for years prior to his death.

It hadn't stopped her from getting a master's degree in psychology, as he had when he was young, to make him proud, and then using it to teach at Harvard. She'd been an accomplished professor, really, which made her death all the more surprising.

She didn't have too many regrets, though, which was even more surprising. She did wish she'd at the very least gotten to watch the next episode of _Supernatural_ , one if the few thrills in her fairly monotonous life.

She'd regret that wish soon enough.


	2. Reborn

Being reborn was terrifying and painful. It was horrifying really—coming out of her mother. She couldn't see, either—her eyes were practically glued shut, because it was still a newborn baby's body she was in, even with her adult mind.

Her body couldn't process her fear and terror either, and the first thing she'd heard was a loud screaming and crying. It had taken her a while to realize that _she_ was the one making all the noise, and even longer to calm down enough to be able to stop.

The feel of the woman holding her— _her new mother_ —had actually helped, in that. Her body instinctively found the woman's arms comforting, safe. She hoped this mother would be a better one than her last had been.

The ringing in her ears had calmed down enough for her to at least hear a few words before she fell asleep—words spoken in a soft, warm woman's voice, very close to her. Her mom's, she was sure.

"Her name will be Elizabeth Winchester. My little Lizzy."


	3. Happy

Being a baby was very boring. It was also very embarrassing. She had been a thirty year old before this, and now a woman who looked to be in her twenties or so was changing her diapers.

Her eyes had opened recently, and she'd gotten a good look at her new parents. Her mother was blonde, with blue eyes, and occasionally looked a little familiar to her, but she supposed it was because she herself had looked the same, in the _before._ The _before_ was what she had taken to calling her past life.

Her father had blue eyes as well, so she assumed she probably had them too. He was handsome, with an angular face and dark hair in contrast to her mother's. For reasons she couldn't fathom, his face was also more than a little familiar.

She hadn't gotten a look at herself yet, but she had barely been taken out of her crib, and there were no mirrors in her room, so that wasn't a surprise.

She'd heard them calling each other by their names, too. Mary and John. They called her Lizzy. They were warm and comforting and part of some new, something different.

She was happy.


	4. Nuts

It was when she was two she realized just what world she had been reincarnated into.

She knew her last name was Winchester, and her parent's names were John and Mary, one blonde and the other brunette and both blue-eyed, but she hadn't really connected all the clues. The conclusion they lead to was absolutely preposterous, and she hadn't been a teenage fangirl, she had been a professor at Harvard with a master's degree in psychology.

Then again, being reborn with all of her memories intact was equally nuts, and she was living through it.

The birth of Dean Winchester had been the catalyst for her epiphany. The moment the newborn baby had been named, her denial had been shoved away, replaced with careful suspicion.

When he'd looked at her with ethereal green eyes a month later, she knew that she had been reborn in the universe of _Supernatural_.


	5. Preparing

Her first instinct had been to wait until she was older, then run as far away as possible from her family. But she knew that wouldn't work. Sam had tried, with Stanford, and Dean had tried, with Lisa and Ben, but Jess had died and Lisa and Ben had had their memories erased.

So she went for the next best option—preparing. She called back to mind all of the knowledge she remembered about the show, which was surprisingly a lot. When she was about three, Dean around two, she had snuck into her parent's rooms, looking for a notebook to write down as much as possible in.

She'd hidden all of the info in Dean's crib, the last place they'd think to look. In front of her parents, she continued to play the part of innocent child. John wasn't yet a hunter, but Mary had once been, and she'd be suspicious something had messed with her daughter if she suddenly became smarter.

As for Dean…she started to love him. She couldn't help it. She had been an only child _before_ , and a little brother had been one of her greatest wishes. He was adorable, and he seemed to adore her too.

His first word was "Lizzy," which was just the cutest thing in the world, though she made sure his next words were "Mama" and "Dada." John and Mary had been thrilled, and her mother praised her for taking such good care of her little brothers.

It was odd seeing John be such a doting father knowing the hardened man he would become in the future. Looking at Mary hurt, now realizing she would die. It wasn't that Lizzy _wanted_ her to die—but what could Lizzy do, against Azazel? Warning them would get her either stuck in the loony bin or worse—dead again.

Contingency plans were all she could make.


	6. Counting

Starting preschool was exceedingly boring. What was even worse was that she had been born in the 1970's, meaning there was literally nothing fun to do but read, and she couldn't very well read complicated books way above her age without calling some attention to her.

She had to work hard to conceal her intelligence, which meant not knowing how to write and writing like a child. It also meant dumbing down her speech patterns even more, adjusting to the way the children surrounding her spoke.

Having been a psychology teacher, adjusting people's perceptions so they saw her the way she preferred to be seen was easier to do than for most, but that didn't make it any less tiring to maintain.

It was Samuel Winchester's birth that brought her back to the real issue at hand, and hit her with just how much time they had until shit began to go down.

Six months and counting.


	7. Doting

Dean was not the doting older brother she remembered from the show. He actually seemed somewhat jealous of the newly christened 'Sammy,' if his envious glares were anything to go by.

Lizzy decided to ask him about it.

"Dean," she called to her little brother as he sulkily rolled a miniature Impala back and forth. She'd found _that_ particular toy in a thrift shop near her elementary and begged Mary to buy it. Dean had loved it, comparing it with awe to 'Dad's car.'

"What." He didn't look at her when he spoke.

"Don't you want to go play with Sammy?" She tried not to sound too bright.

" _No._ " There was actual venom in his voice when he answered.

"Dean, I know you might be a little jealo—"

"I'm _not_ jealous. I just don't know why he's so special."

" _Dean_." The tone of her voice was scolding, now. "He's your little brother. He gets sad, too, when you ignore him."

"Not like he needs me. He has you and Mom and Dad, and no one cares about me any—"

"That is _not_ true. We love you just as much as him, but he's a baby, and they need a lot of care."

When Dean doesn't seem to get it, she sighs, and decides to use a slight scare tactic to make him realize that Sammy can't take care of himself.

"Dean, if Mom and Dad ignore him for a little bit, Sammy could _die._ " Dean looks a little surprised, now, and he actually turns to look at her.

"He could cover his face with a pillow, and not be able to breath. He could move and hit his head on the crib." Dean looks horrified, and a little queasy, now. She knows these aren't things she should be saying to a child, but all she can think of is Azazel dripping blood into Sam's mouth, and Dean running away from a burning house.

"Okay," Dean says in a trembling voice, and she pulls away from her increasingly panicked thoughts. Realizing that maybe she's gone a bit too far, she sits down and hugs him.

"Sorry," she says quietly. Dean doesn't reply.

"But we need to take care of Sammy, you and me," she continues, and then she pulls away and looks at him. "Like I took care of you."

He nods firmly at her. "I'll be the best big brother ever."

She grins at him, then challengingly says, "You think you can be a better big brother then I can be a sister?"

He looks offended. "Of course I can," he says loudly, forgetting all previous jealousy.

"It's on, then."


	8. Burning

On November 3rd, 1983, Lizzy stays far away from Sammy's room. She goes to bed quickly, and doesn't do the letter homework that her teacher Mr. Dickens, has given her, because she knows she won't be staying in this town for much longer.

She lays tucked in with three-year old Dean, her six-year old body dwarfing his. She can't sleep, though. She's too afraid, and it makes no difference to her because she'll be woken up later anyways.

It's when she hears a scream—Mary's voice—and John's shout, that she shoves her brother awake quickly and grabs onto his hand tightly and she leaves the relative safety of their room. Down the hallway, she can see the fire burning, her father coming out with Sammy in his arms. He notices her and quickly shoves Sammy at her.

"Take him! Take your brothers and run, Lizzy!"

Lizzy follows the order instantly, cradling her six-month old brother in her arms.

"Dean, grab my shirt."

Dean looks terrified, but complies quickly. "We're going to run now," she tells him, and practically drags him down the staircase and out the door. They run across the street, where she stops to wait for John. He shows up a few minutes later, a little singed but ultimately unharmed.

He looks at them and takes Sammy from Lizzy. She clutches Dean's hand tightly, and he squeezes hers in a death grip.

Red and yellow on a black backdrop is the last she sees of her home for a very long time.


	9. Hole

Lizzy quickly insists that Dean start calling her Liz. She doesn't need John trying to protect her because she's a girl or because he sees her as a child. She doesn't think it's completely necessary, judging from the way he starts to treat them—like soldiers in training—but she does it anyway.

For her next birthday—which happens to be July 26th, her death-day in the _before_ —she gets a gun. A _gun_. There's bad parenting, and then there's this. Dean's birthday is before hers, and he gets one as well. She makes sure to watch him when he handles it—John is always off hunting, and she doesn't want Dean letting off a gunshot that gets authority attention on them.

The instincts of the adult she was _before_ are constantly screaming at her to _do_ something about this situation, because this is no way to raise a child, but she forces them down, so far down she can tolerate teaching a five-year-old how to shoot after John teaches her.

Liz is sure John didn't leave Dean and Sammy alone when they were this young nearly as much as her does now in the show. That can only be her fault—she plays the part of overly mature older sister, and it's likely because of this that he thinks she can take care of them fine, even without him.

She can, but it isn't any less hard on them. Dean doesn't speak for a week, after Mary's death, and coaxing him to speak is difficult. Even then, it's only to her and Sammy. He seems to have taken her warning to protect Sammy to heart—he's always with the baby, playing with him, feeding him.

She takes care of them both, trying hard to fill up the hole Mary has left in their lives.


	10. Secret

Liz asks John to allow her to not go to school. She's already been through all of this, in any case—no need to do it twice, especially in the 80's, where the world isn't nearly as advanced as it is in the 2000's.

She does, however, make sure Dean goes to school. When he complains about learning, she carefully guides him through his homework and other work.

"Larry said vampires aren't real," Dean complains loudly as she feeds Sammy a cup of applesauce she pilfered from a nearby deli. Sammy makes a face and smacks his hand at the spoon. Lizzy thinks that at age two, he's slowly developing some of the well-known sass he'll have when he's older.

The thought brings her little joy, as the elder sister who has to care for him.

"To him, they aren't," she replies to Dean. Dean frowns at her.

"Why not?" She pauses, realizes she never bothered to explain to him what exactly a hunter was.

"Because it's a secret. Only hunters like me and Dad know they're real." She turns to him, taking in his confused expression. "If normal people like Larry knew, they would be really afraid. So we protect them."

This, she feels is a blatant lie, but it's one that's necessary, at least until Dean is older.

Dean scrunches up his face in thought, then says slowly, "So we're secret superheroes?"

She wants to sigh, but nods instead. "Yes."

"Like Batman?" His eyes are sparkling now, and she feels the urge to giggle. It really is cute, his developing love for Batman.

"Yes, like Batman," she concedes, and his face breaks into a grin.

"I'm Batman!" He proclaims loudly, and then says, "I'm going to be a hunter like you and Dad!"

She wishes he didn't have to be, but there's really nothing she can do to change that fact.

"Okay," she says, "but you don't want to be a stupid hunter, do you? Get out your homework."

She allows herself a small grin as he groans. At least with her to take on the burden of caring for them, neither Dean nor Sam will have to grow up as fast as they did _before_.


	11. Memories

Liz finds herself in an antique shop. She is slowly starting to trust Dean to actually be able to care for Sammy and himself on his own, and he was starting to hate being babied. As a sign of her trust, she'd left them alone for a bit.

Though she finds herself plagued with worry for them, she has to admit, it's nice to have some alone time.

Which was again, why she found herself in an antique shop. It was because of a dream—not a nightmare, or something supernatural, but one of the _before_.

It had brought back memories of the oddest thing—social networking, in particular, Tumblr. The way some of her students were always blogging on it and a comment one girl had made about how the _Supernatural_ boys could have made hunting easier.

Iron rings for ghost-fighting and holy water guns. She is at the antique shop to steal a few iron rings. They had no security and the only person manning the counter was an elderly man with clearly failing sight, so it would be fairly easy. She feels a bit guilty as she sneaks them out either way.

Next she relieves some man who looks obviously rich of his wallet. Pickpocketing is an extremely important skill to learn when on the run. The guilt is still there, but she shoves it down. Once she might have been a law-abiding citizen—this was her life now.

She buys a set of children's water guns and a set of rosaries.

When she gets back to the crappy motel room, she sits Dean down and explains to him how to use each of her acquired items. She teaches him the chant to create holy water, and then moves her attention to the cute Sammy.

Three-year old Sammy is adorable, and Liz wishes they could stay like this forever.

In the face of what is to come, she stares into Sammy's wide puppy-dog eyes, and wonders if she is strong enough.


	12. Hunting

Liz is nine when John allows her to go on her first hunt. He mentions a ghost he's going to hunt in Durango, Colorado, and she jumps at the chance to beg him to let her join. She's been wanting to test her new iron rings, and if the work, she's thinking about buying silver ones too.

The trend for the victims of the ghost is, so far, brunette and young, around their early twenties. Three of them were married—the most recent two aren't. All of the women say they were attacked by flying beer bottles and had the marks of belt whips appear on their body—from nowhere, but with all the pain as if they had been hit.

The ghost turns out to be of the dead husband of a recently widowed Lucy Carter, Greg Carter.

As Liz comforts the sobbing woman, she talks about how the man began to abuse her only a month after their marriage. She had thought they were in love—he had been so nice, and they'd been dating for three years.

She hadn't expected the alcohol, or the drunken angry rampages. It had been during one of those times that she had finally lost it, and thrown a beer bottle at his head—killing him instantly. Horrified, she had taken the body and buried it in the nearby park. Since he had no relatives to speak of, everyone believed her when she told them that he had gone away for a job.

Liz goes into grief counselor mode instantly and rubs her back gently, telling her it isn't fault. She just didn't know her husband as well as she thought she did.

When they goes to the man's grave, he appears quickly, pale but furious-looking. There are pieces of glasses—remnants of a beer bottle—sticking out from the side of his head, and his face is a mask of fury. John shoots at the ghost, distracting it for about a minute, then goes to work digging out his body.

When he appears again, Liz shoves a fist through his stomach, and he disperses again. Liz grins—taking martial arts in her last life was definitely a good idea. If anyone needs to know self-defense, it's the Winchesters. She dances around, shoving a fist wherever Greg appears, and it seems that as a new ghost, he hasn't yet gotten the hang of telekinesis.

When John notices what she's doing, he looks surprised, at first, then grins.

"That's my Liz," he says, ruffling her hair, "as smart as her mom was…"

He looks sad, then, but the look is gone in seconds. Liz can feel the guilt for knowing that Mary would die and not doing anything to stop it rising. She clamps it down, hard.

It's a typical salt and burn, really, and the job goes without a hitch. She's definitely getting those silver rings, somehow.

Dean and Sammy look at her in awe when she regales them with an extremely exaggerated tale of the job. John tells her that Sammy is too young to know the truth, but she'll be the judge of that, thank you very much. She goes to sleep happy, that day, curled up with a little brother in each arm.


	13. Interlude: Dean

Dean thinks his older sister Lizzy is really smart. She tells him not call her that, but he calls her it in his head anyway. He thinks she tries too hard to be grown up.

Lizzy tries to hide it from Dean, but she seems really sad sometimes. She always takes care of him and Sammy, but nobody is there to take care of her. So Dean tries to help her so she doesn't have to always watch over Sammy.

He knows that Dad has to hunt monsters, but he doesn't get why he always leaves them alone. The dads on the television take care of their families, but Dad makes Lizzy do it instead.

He misses Mommy. When Mommy was alive, he had a Daddy, and a Lizzy. Now Mommy is dead, and there's no one to make him apple pie or sing Hey Jude to him before he goes to bed. There's just Dad and Liz and Sammy who cries too much.

Lizzy tries to sing to him sometimes, but she isn't very good at it. She tells him stories, instead—stories of a man who flies through space in a time machine, of a boy who discovers he's a wizard and of children whose parents are gods. She says they're stories of the future. Dean believes her.

Dad sometimes gives him and Lizzy orders. He doesn't follow them unless Lizzy does. Dean trusts Lizzy. Lizzy is smarter than Dad, even though Dad is bigger.

Lizzy is always right, after all.


	14. Bobby

John meets Bobby purely by coincidence. They encounter each other on a wendigo hunt, and Bobby rips John a new one for hunting alone.

"You've got kids back in some crappy motel? The hell're ya doin' huntin', then!?" This is what John later quotes from Bobby when he is telling her about the hunt.

Bobby invites them to his house to, in his words, "Give those kids someplace safe ta stay, an' teach ya somethin' useful 'bout huntin', since yer runnin' around like a headless chicken tryin' ta kill anythin' with anythin'."

Bobby's house is even cooler in real life. Liz was _not_ a fangirl, in any sense of the word, but she had always found Bobby a cool character. He had always been there for the boys— _her_ boys, now—and she trusted him to be a good influence.

All the information he had laying around was just icing on the cake.

Bobby looks at her oddly when she stands on her tiptoes and grabs the largest tome she can—which just happens to be on demons. She winces internally, and turns to look at Bobby.

He's staring at her. She meets his eyes squarely, because she knows when she's beat. She wasn't planning on hiding her intelligence from him—she would rather not have him think she's not human.

"You sure you can read somethin' like that, kid?" He raises an eyebrow at her.

Dean, who sitting on a springy sofa with Sammy in his arms, looks up. He frowns.

"Of course she can, she's Lizzy—I mean Liz." Now she does wince. She's has tried her best to protect Dean, but she really isn't sure where the unwavering faith he has in her came from. She knows that the fallout when he realizes she isn't infallible will be huge.

"Hm," Bobby says, the eyebrow still raised. "And why's that, Dean?" He's not using kid, anymore—first name is a definitely a sign of him actually being serious rather than just humoring Dean.

"Liz's always right. She's smarter than Dad," Dean boasts, and in his arms, Sammy seems to have gained interest in the conversation, as he's eagerly nodding along.

"Lith thmart!" He says loudly.

"'Liz is smart,'" she corrects him near instantly, then flushes. "Sorry, force of habit," she says as apology for interrupting Bobby. Bobby doesn't seem upset, really—he seems more amused than anything, and a bit contemplative.

Sammy takes her correction to heart, and immediately begins to fix his pronunciation, Dean snickering until she scolds him, after which he tries to help Sammy out instead. Bobby watches the whole thing with an amused air about him.

Liz takes the large book and settles into a large chair, opening the book and spreading it out in her lap. Bobby gives her a cursory glance before ignoring her altogether. Bullet dodged, she thinks.

The book is more than just informative. Sometime during her reading, Bobby has left—something to do with a hunt and John, and Dean and Sammy have fallen asleep. She closes the book, tugging the book's ribbon as a bookmark, and climbs out of the chair.

She grabs a raggedy old blanket and covers them with it, then resumes her reading. She doesn't know when she falls asleep, but when she wakes the next morning, there's a blanket over her and the book is on the table, still open to the last page she was reading.


	15. School

It's Sammy's first day of school, and Liz has learned a lesson from the way Dean was unprepared. She has instilled into five-year old Sammy that hunting is to be kept a secret.

She's also taught him the alphabet. So sue her. She remembers that in his past life he was smart enough to get into Stanford. And that was alone. With extra help, she could probably get him into Harvard.

Well, she plans on that, until she remembers that Stanford is where Sammy meets Jessica Moore. Should she take that away from him? But…

If the demons surrounded him there, then wouldn't it not matter, regardless of where he was? He might not meet Jess, but a demon would introduce him to a girl, and Jess's story would still happen—with a different girl.

She cringes at her thoughts, but decides on her path.

On the other hand, for her, it is her first day of middle school. Though John had agreed to let her forego elementary school, he refuses to budge on this, citing something about child services and government requirements.

So now she is Lisa 'Liz' Wesson (using a fake name is part of her agreement with John), homeschooled girl who is going to school for the first time in sixth grade, and child prodigy. She plans on masquerading as a child prodigy, anyway.

She ties her black hair into a ponytail and puts on her fake plastic glasses. The glasses are blue, matching her eyes, and she'd stolen them from a thrift shop as a just-in-case disguise material. They were also a memento to _before_ —she had needed actual glasses then.

She supposed the combination of the hardy Winchester-Campbell genes were why she didn't need them now.

She exchanges her silver rings for a silver Solomon's Key necklace, instead. The necklace was a gift from Bobby, who, after knowing her for two years has realized that she was more than a little paranoid about demons. He'd done a bit of research and found the necklace for her.

She planned on never letting go of it, even after she got her anti-possession tats when she was sixteen.

The clothes she's wearing are secondhand—a grey hoodie over a T-shirt and loose jeans with sneakers. She's definitely not going to be noticeable by appearance, that's for sure.

She slings her black book bag over both shoulders—she never really understood why slinging it over one was deemed cool, she just though it was painful—and sets off. With Sammy and Dean. She's dropping them both off—Sammy at the nearest kindergarten and Dean at the elementary school.

When she reaches the middle school, after prying Sammy's death grip off her—he'd seemed to be ready, then become clingy at the last second—she slides into the seat at the farthest corner of her classroom, next to the window, throws her bag on the ground next to her, and leans her elbow on her desk, preparing to zone off.

The class slowly fills up with students, and soon she hears the school speaker system sound something about saying the pledge. She sighs, and stands with the rest of the kids, mouthing the words lazily.

The teacher is a bubbly brunette named Ms. Corvette. Liz wonders if she'd be better fit to teach the elementary schoolers. She doesn't seem like she can handle the unruly children that are prepubescent middle schoolers. She groans internally when she is called up to introduce herself. The school is an escalator school, so most of the kids have known each other since they were still being potty-trained.

"Now, Lisa is a transfer student from…" Ms. Corvette turns to her questioningly.

"Idaho," she offers, and some kid snickers.

Ms. Corvette shows the slightest sign of irritation, but smooths it away quickly. "She's homeschooled, so make sure to be nice and helpful to her."

"I'll only be here for a week," Liz interrupts, rather rudely, but she does want to make that clear. She doesn't want to inadvertently make a friend that she really likes and end up having to leave them later.

Granted, that in itself is unlikely since she's technically so much older than the kids in the room. It's hard for her to relate to their issues, and even without that, the whole hunting thing puts a large barrier between their world and hers.

She spends the class gazing at the sky when the teacher talks, and rapidly doing any work assigned.

When she picks up Sammy, he can't wait to go back to school—he talks about the nice and pretty Miss Grey, and the cool games, and how cool it was.

"Miss Grey is really pretty and nice, and she said I was smart! Cuz I knew my alphabet already, and I could count to a hundred, and, and!" He's actually waving his hands around, and Liz laughs a little.

"So you want to go back, right?" She says, and he nods with an adorably huge grin on his face. Next to him, Dean snorts.

"Yeah, wait until you get older," he grumbles. "Then they'll start giving you _homework_." He says the word with a shudder. Liz can't help but smile at Dean. It's the same complaint every day, but he still diligently does it when she tells him to.

"It isn't _that_ bad," she says, and Dean gives her a bitch face. She knows it was Sam's thing, in the _before,_ but he had to have got it from somewhere—and that somewhere, she has found, happens to be young Dean.

"Okay, maybe it is," she concedes, "but it makes you smart, so bear it," she tells Dean. "A stupid hunter is a dead hunter."

Dean and Sammy look at each other when she says that and nod seriously at her.

Little darlings, they are. "So," she says, "what snack do you want today?"

"Pie!" "Apples!"

"Apple pie it is, then."


	16. Brothers

Liz is midway through her tenures at various middle schools when John takes her to hunt a werewolf in small town in Michigan. Dean is beginning to slowly get more and more enthused about hunting—it's to the point where he throws a tantrum every time she refuses to take him on a hunt.

It might be selfish of her but she wants to keep his innocence for just a little longer. She promises she'll take him along on a hunt the next time—but only if it's just a haunting.

He pouts and grumbles, but agrees.

While John is off searching for clues of where the werewolf might be, Liz sits on a playground swing, lazily flopping her feet back and forth. Dean and Sammy are back at the crappy motel, where she left them with the TV on—she refuses to watch children's shows that make her feel like she's losing an IQ point a second—so she put on some family sitcom.

On second thought, that might've been a bad idea. Who knew what kind of ideas they'd get.

Liz is broken out of her thoughts when she sees a small boy walk to the swing at the very end of the set. It's starting to get chilly, so there aren't very many kids at the playground, and they are the only ones at the swings.

He climbs on and just sits there. He's around Sammy's age, but no boy Sammy's age should look so depressed. She gets off her swing and walks over to him.

"Hey," she says softly. He doesn't look up.

She crouches down, bending her knees. "What's wrong?" She says, her voice still soft.

She is on eye level with the boy, and he meets her eyes now. His eyes are a dark grey, and filled with tears threatening to spill over the edge. He blinks a few times and the pained look on his face is replaced with a poker face.

It doesn't take the pain out of his eyes. It doesn't hide the large bruise on his cheek either, which isn't too noticeable from a distance, but is obviously a handprint up close. A grown man's, from the looks of it.

Liz feels the stirrings of anger. "Who did that?" She asks, her voice deceptively calm. He looks alarmed and shakes his head.

"Nobody. I fell." He says it with the practice of someone who's said it far too many times. His voice is hoarse, not with disuse, but the way Sammy's is after he's cried for too long.

She nods, though. She can't—won't—let him continue to get hurt, and she needs to appear as if she believes him if she wants him to not run away.

"I'm Liz Smith," she says casually. He blinks at her, confused. She supposes this is the point where somebody either gets him in trouble, or just stops talking to him. "What's your name?"

He narrows his eyes. "Why do you care?" His voice holds a note of bitterness.

"I'd like to be friends," she shrugs. He doesn't seem to believe her. She sighs. "Fine, I'll tell you the truth."

Before he can take that the wrong way, she plows on. "I'm collecting cute little brothers, and you've just become a candidate." The look on his face is so dumbfounded she resists the urge to giggle.

"…Max Miller." She blinks, once. Twice. Searches through her memories or why that seems so familiar. The term _special children_ pops into her head. He's the same age as Sam. He's like Sam…he's _like Sam_. She remembers Max Miller, the abused man-child who eventually turned on his abusers.

She doesn't want this small child in front of her to go through that. She smiles at him. He looks a little hopefully at her. Her smile widens, and a small, hesitant responding smile appears on his face.

She can't resist. She hugs the kid, cuddling him. "You're so cute," she exclaims.

She wonders if it's a bad thing that she's planning on kidnapping this child. She's taking him away from a bad home, so that part's alright, but…she could just turn him over to the law.

Yeah, as if that would work. His uncle and father would just cover it all up. And the foster kid system wasn't very good, especially in _Supernatural_ , where everything that could go wrong, did. She wouldn't take the risk of him ending up in another abusive home, in any case.

She knew John would probably rip her a new one for this, but what else was new. Ever since she'd begun to re-enter her teen years, adolescence had been making her more irritable than usual. She and John started having huge arguments, mostly over how to care for Sammy and Dean.

It was why she'd been in the playground in the first place.

She let go of Max, then grabbed his hand and tugged a bit. "Come on, I've decided."

He doesn't resist being pulled off the swing, but tilts his head at her a bit. "Decided what?"

"You're going to be my newest little brother."

He blinks. "But I…"

"Do you want to go home and tell your family?" She asks, hitting right where it hurts. She knows he obviously can't, or there would be no way for him to even see her again. He shakes his head quickly.

"No." She smiles. "Come on, then, let's go meet your new brothers."

And that is the story of how she kidnaps a child. She wonders what her _before_ self would think of her current self's moral compass. But circumstances change, and with them, people.


	17. Shtriga

In Fort Douglas, Wisconsin, children are mysteriously falling ill for no reason. John takes them there. What he's hunting is a shtriga.

Liz remembers this hunt from the show. She flat-out refuses to join him on this hunt. Instead, she keeps a steady watch over her little brothers—Dean, Sammy, and now, Max. She calls him a Winchester instead of a Miller, now. Not as if the family had done him much good, in any case.

He had been more than a little shocked to find out monsters were real, but he equated them to his family, now—people who did bad things to people who didn't deserve it. She had been training him as a hunter personally, as she had Dean, and though he seemed to be more of a pacifist, he listened to her diligently. The hunter training had been a requirement of John's to allow her to keep him.

He'd grumbled something about the law being hard enough to get around as is. She'd winced internally, but hadn't budged.

Sammy, instead of being jealous, had taken in Max as a sort of best friend—he seemed to already be developing his desire to live normally and not have to lie to everyone he met about what his family did, and Max had become a sort-of "normal" comrade.

Dean had been jealous until she'd explained Max's circumstances to him. Then he just regarded the boy as a sort of 'second' Sammy. As Sammy was christened 'Samantha,' Max was christened 'Maxine.'

She found this hilarious.

The shunt for the shtriga actually went successfully this time, with no vulnerable Sammy for the shtriga to prey on. At least this would stop all the future deaths the thing would've caused.

Liz had never stopped to think about the ripple effect that would have, though.


	18. Dating

Liz finds that while high school the first time—as a nerdy girl who did nothing but study and wore coke-bottle glasses—was bad, high school the second time is so much worse. Partially because it's just rehashing knowledge she already has, and partially because apparently the lone wolf aura, even with the fake glasses, attract all sorts of weirdoes.

And 'Mean Girls'. As in, the rich posse of girls who picked on her because she's alone and therefore vulnerable. She desperately wishes she could get out some of those martial arts skills she's trained in because hello, hunter, but she's trying to set an example for Dean.

He might think he's stupid in comparison to Sam, but she wants him to not get suspended or drop out, because she can see he's just as smart and deserves some sort of recognition for it, even if it's just a crappy high school diploma.

It's in sophomore year that she makes her first actual friend. It's a brunette named Katie, with soft brown eyes. That's also the year she finds out that she's apparently bisexual.

In the _before_ , she had never really fallen in love—she'd thought herself aromantic, or asexual. She'd dated, sure, a ton of times, but it had never come to anything. It's different with Katie.

Liz's first kiss in this life is with Katie. They don't really date so much as kiss a few times, and don't stay in contact when John moves onto the next hunt. The next time she kind of, sort of, likes someone is a blond boy named Morgan.

She has a few flings here and there throughout high school, but nothing super serious. It was more than _before_ , where dating had basically been holding hands and making polite talk with vague disinterest.

Dean glares at any guy she dates though. It's cute, somewhat like a growling puppy. Sammy and Max don't seem as hostile, but she just thinks they're better at covering it up with a polite façade.

Dean seems more than a little surprised by her dating girls, but doesn't comment. Sammy and Max don't either, though she thinks that's more out of them not caring than trying to avoid the topic.

The time she catches Dean making out in the back of one of their motels with a…questionably-dressed brunette is probably the most awkward thing ever. He's getting more tail in middle school than _she_ did, that's for sure, though it's probably just him being more sociable.

She wonders if his impending stud-y-ness is her fault, or something that would have happened regardless of whether she existed or not. _Supernatural_ Dean was definitely a stud.

She hopes she never walks in on Sammy and a girl. Or…Max. No. Not little Max. That would probably scar her—for life.


	19. Years

The years, for Liz, go by quickly. A little too quickly for her liking. Before she knows it, she is a fulltime hunter, hunting on her own without John, Dean is in high school, and Sammy and Max are in middle school.

High school Dean is much the same as the Dean from _before_ , though Liz thinks she's softened him up a lot more—and instilled a healthy fear of women in him, as well as in Sammy and Max.

She and John alternate between taking Dean on hunts and training Sammy and Max. Well, John trains Sammy, in any case. Max is almost always with either her, Dean or Sam—it's no secret John could care less for him, and Liz won't risk his safety.

Dean and Sam have come to care for him as family, too, and family doesn't end in blood, so Bobby is like a surrogate father to the boy. She leaves Max with Bobby often, when he can't take care of him—she knows she can trust the gruff old man.

Sammy's desire to be normal is only becoming stronger by the day, and she knows she won't be able to hold him back from leaving the hunting life, so she goes ahead with what she's been planning since she watched him soak up knowledge like a sponge—she plans the idea of getting into Harvard in his mind. She compliments and speaks appreciatively of the school, occasionally a bit longingly, and none of it is fake.

She does miss it, after all.

Dean looks at her oddly, because even now he still hates school and only chooses not to drop out because of his still existent idolization of her. She has no idea how _that_ still even exists—in a high school boy, no less—but it's there.

The effect it has on Max surprises her. He starts to diligently study, him and Sammy becoming competitive in matters of school. She doesn't begrudge him if he wants to leave the life—she pulled him into it only to protect him from his family, and if he wants a truly normal life, well—she only wants him safe.

Dean grows up and graduates high school, and when she offers, flat out refuses to go to college.

"I'm done with school—forever," he says, still in the tacky blue graduation gown. She had forced him to go to at least one school's ceremony, and the pictures she took would be eternal blackmail. "I got a diploma, a 'sides, _you_ never went to college, and you're the best hunter I know 'sides Dad, so I'll be fine."

She purses her lips. "I'm a prodigy—I don't count," she says, but doesn't try to convince him. Dean had recently begun to emulate John—music taste, clothing, the works. When he'd given Dean the Impala, he'd been ecstatic.

She had rejected his offer to give _her_ the Impala when she was old enough, knowing there was no way she could take that privilege from Dean, and not really having a thing for classic cars anyway.

The way he began to take John as a male role model wasn't the greatest thing, though. Liz had her own car—a van, really—but when she was with Dean in the Impala, he'd started to implement some of the future rules that, while amusing in the show, drove her nuts in real life.

Metallica and Led Zeppelin did _not_ classify as her idea of music. Her taste leaned more towards Sammy's, and Max…he preferred literal classical music…sometimes she wondered if he was just an old man stuck in a young body.

In any case, the Winchester siblings, once as tightly knit as Liz could possibly make them, had begun to grow up, and along with growing up, grow apart.


	20. Demons

Liz can see the demon. No, really. She can literally see the demon, its image flickering around its vessel.

It isn't the cloud of black smoke that they appear as when they're not in a vessel. It's black, yes, but it's also red and fiery and sharp and _jarring_. It's horrifying.

All she can think of, as Sammy throws holy water at it and they both make a break for it, is the fact that Dean became _that_ , in the _before_. That he spend decades being tortured by those… _things_.

That Sam had fed on the blood of those things. Her Sammy, could, in the future, have _sex_ with one of those things. She shudders. _No._

She makes a decision, then. She will _never_ allow Hell to get their hands on Sammy or Dean. Even Max, though since they could care less about him and Liz knows he's safer than them.

She can instantly _see_ any demon that comes near them—she'll know just by looking at them.

Or hearing their voices, because she can hear their true voices echoing in tone with their meatsuit's, and it tears at her eardrums, she can hear the pain and cruelty in them.

She knows she likely has this ability because of something to do with her soul—the fact that it isn't of this world. It doesn't matter, either way.

It's a curse and a gift, and she will use it to the best of her abilities.


	21. Breaking

Eventually, the growing tension in the Winchester family hits a breaking point. Everything falls apart. The only thing that comforts Liz is that she knows that they won't stay broken like this forever.

Even though it certainly feels like forever.

Sammy wants to go to college. Max doesn't take a part in the argument, since he knows John could care less for him, but it's fairly clear that he wants the normal life.

John blames him for Sammy's decision, and that's where Liz steps in. She releases all her pent-up frustration at John, at the way he treats them, at how he continues to let _his_ need for revenge pollute the rest of their family.

Dean and Sammy are shocked at the way she feels towards John. Max isn't—he can see the similarities between John and his own father, and though John at least cares, it doesn't excuse his treatment of his kids.

Dean puts his own two cents in, then, accusing her of manipulating Sammy into wanting this. She doesn't deny it.

John tells Sammy if he leaves, he shouldn't come back. Max follows him as he walks out the door, only pausing to look at her for a second. She gives him a small smile, and he nods, his back straightening as the door closes behind him.

She leaves then, after meeting John's eyes for just a second. It's enough to see that though he's hurt, he meant what he said—at least, when he said it. There's a hint of regret.

She doesn't say anything, just walks out the door. Sammy and Max are long gone, likely in the car she bought personally for Sammy's birthday. She'd offered Max one too, but he and Sammy had agreed that it was a waste of money and just decided to share.

She hears footsteps behind her. She recognizes the pattern. Dean.

"Dean."

"Why'd you do it?" He says. His voice is confused, hurt, lost. "Why'd you say those things to Dad?"

"Because they're true," she says, her voice completely calm.

"He tries!" Dean defends, but the look on his face says that he knows the argument is a lost cause.

His voice is small when he speaks again, not at all normal for her cocky little brother. His usual bravado is nowhere to be seen.

"Are you gonna leave, too?"

She meets his eyes. "I don't think I can be near John right now. Don't think he wants me around either."

Dean winces at her calling him 'John' instead of 'Dad'.

"Where are you going?" He asks, not arguing the topic.

She grins, then, and then she says, "Well, there aren't just hunts and monsters in America, you know. I've always wanted to see Mt. Fuji."

Dean's eyes widen. "You're joking."

"Nope. Four year global road trip for me."

He looks like he just got slapped in the face. "Four years? You're gonna leave us for _four years_?!"

She winces and then says, "So's Sammy and Max."

"They'll still be in the country!"

"You're still afraid of flying?" Dean flinches and turns away.

"Fine. Whatever. Just go."

"Dean," Liz says, but he interrupts her.

"Just go!"

She turns and walks to her car, giving him one last glances before she opens the door and slides into the driver's seat. Their eyes meet through the glass of the window, dark green and dark blue.

He turns and walks back into their room, and that is the last Liz will see of him for a long time.


	22. Adam

Liz doesn't immediately hop on the next plane to Europe. No, she scrounges inside of her bag for the small sheet of paper she stuffed in her bag right before she left.

The paper has only two words on it: _1990, Minnesota_. Liz parks the car in the least conspicuous place she can think of, and walks into the nearest library, hoping they have functional computers, or some way of searching for people.

Luckily, they have working computers _and_ good internet connection. She searches for any and all _Adam Milligan_ s or _Kate Milligan_ s living in Minnesota.

She finds the right records, except…Kate Milligan is deceased. Died in childbirth. Liz stares. No. _No_. That can't be.

She finds record of Adam, too—they have no record of who is father is, his mother is dead, and he lives in foster care. _Foster care._ Didn't Kate have any other family?

This…this is not what she expected. This explains why she never saw any mention of Minnesota (aside from references to cases) in the journal besides the first one. John never even knew that Adam _existed_.

It can't be anything but her fault. Adam had loved his mom in the _before_ —he'd agreed to be an _angel vessel_ to get her back. And he'd done so for Dean and Sam, too, when he'd realized they'd been duped, even after finding out what it would do to him.

He'd had a normal life before it'd been fucked over, and now, because she _exists_ and _of course_ , how could she forget about the fucking _ripple effect_ , he wouldn't even get that.

She'll fix this, somehow, she thinks as she drives like a madman. She can hear a few honks, but pays them no mind. She _needs_ to get to Adam, to the younger brother she remembered too late and _failed_.

When she reaches the address of the home Adam lives in, she isn't thinking straight as she walks straight up to the door and starts banging. The door opens quickly.

Liz finally realizes how nuts she's being when she sees the middle-aged brunette in an apron that opens the door. She calms herself down a bit.

"Who are you?" The lady asks in a suspicious voice. Liz lets her voice slide into professional mode. She's lucky she's already wearing a suit and tie.

"I'm looking for an Adam Milligan," she says, but before she can continue, she's interrupted.

"There's no one named that here," the lady says, and Liz is instantly suspicious.

"Are you sure?" She asks, and the lady nods yes, quickly. Liz drops the professional aura—she needs to find Adam, _now_ , and she won't let some lady get in her way.

"Listen, lady," she says, promise of a threat in her voice, "if you don't tell me where _my little brother_ is right now…"

The lady's eyes widen, and she finally talks.

"The boy ran away!" She yelps. "Took him in out of the goodness of my heart, because I knew what a darling Kate was, and she didn't deserve what happened to her, and the kid disappeared a week later!"

Liz feels faint. She leaves quickly, not wanting to hear anymore. How on earth is she supposed to find Adam now? He could be anywhere! And even worse—Liz can remember the way the original Adam died.

Shapeshifters. They could have him right now, already. Liz doesn't go back to her car.

She starts walking, aimlessly down the streets. She wants a beer right now—anything to get away from this. She hates this.

She hates that the Winchester family is so dysfunctional, she hates hunting, she hates that she continues to fail her brothers, and most of all, she hates being Elizabeth Winchester. Lizzy. Liz.

She wishes she was…what, again? What was her name, _before_? She can't even remember anymore. It started with an S…What was her old father's name? Her old mother's?

Her favorite students? What did she look like _before_?

She can barely remember any of it.

Before she knows it, she's gotten herself drunk off her ass at a bar. She gets out of her seat, staggering outside, into some dark alleyway. Her back against the wall, she slides down, staring up at the sky.

There aren't any stars. _Falling stars, falling from Heaven, falling angels, the angels are falling…_

She blinks. A face is obscuring her view of the dark sky. It's a child, looking around eleven, messy blonde hair falling into his eyes. Blue eyes, bringing her previous trail of thought back.

 _Castiel had blue eyes…I wonder if this is an angel…isn't it too early…_

"Are you an angel?" she says in a drunken drawl. The kid stares at her.

"The hell?"

"Angels shouldn't curse," she scolds. The boy looks at her weirdly.

"Look, lady, I'm not an angel. I just want your money."

"Just mojo it up," she says, and then blinks. "You're not? Oh…how much?"

She couldn't help Adam—maybe she can help this kid. The kid looks even more confused.

"Aren't you gonna call the cops on me or something?" He says suspiciously.

"Why?" She says. "I failed my little brother, I can't fail another kid…"

She tilts her head at him. "He would've been blonde, too, and blue-eyed…Why'd he run away…Need to find him…"

She leans her head back, feeling slightly nauseous. Her eyes start to slide shut.

"Hey, lady, are you alright?" He sounds a little panicked now.

"'M fine," she mutters. "Can't sleep, gotta find Adam…"

Liz drags herself into standing position, but finds her legs barely able to hold her. She presses a hand against the wall to keep herself upright. Suddenly, there's a support on her other side. It's the kid.

"Your little brother's name is Adam?" He says, helping her stand. She looks at him curiously, then nods.

The kid looks her in the eye—his blue eyes hold some odd sort of emotion in them.

"What's his last name?"

"He's a Milligan, like his mom," she says, and the kid's grip on her tightens.

She shakes her head. She thinks she actually starting to sober up, a little, and realizes that she just poured out her issues to a kid. She decides to head for her car—she needs to get some water in her.

The kid doesn't let go of her. Liz thinks she might have too big of a weakness for helpless-looking street urchins. She lets the kid grab onto her shirt as she pulls a water bottle out of her trunk—holy water isn't for drinking, but she could care less right now, and she can always make more later.

She realizes she doesn't even know if the kid next to her is human, and casually offers him a bottle. He looks at her, then at the bottle, then slowly takes it from her hand.

"Well?" She says. "Gonna keep staring at it all night?" He quickly screws off the cap and starts drinking.

There goes the demon-child theory. She hands him a silver rosary. He takes it from her hand with no problem. Not a shapeshifter, then. And there probably isn't anything else he would be and not have eaten or maimed her already.

"What do I do with this?" He asks her, looking weirdly at her.

"You wear it," she deadpans, and he just stares. She sighs. She knows she's going to take him in—her weakness for kids aside, she's been with a family for so long that she doesn't want to be alone, not at all. She doesn't want to put the burden of replacing her family onto a small boy, but…she remembers tiny Sammy, and little Max, and even farther back to younger Dean. Who this kid, barring the bright blue eyes, is reminiscent of.

"What's your name?" She asks him. He flinches, ever so slightly, and she looks at him with renewed suspicion. He looks down, avoiding her sharp stare.

"It's, uh, Adam. Adam Milligan."

Liz stares, feeling her breath hitch, and relief welling up in her chest. She doesn't hesitate before she grabs him in a tight hug.

Maybe she hasn't failed, after all.


	23. Tengu

Liz runs down the forest path, heading towards the shrine. How could she be so _dumb_? She _knew_ that the forests of Japan were filled with supernatural creatures, and not just because the Japanese were an amazingly superstitious group.

The _yōkai_ behind her continued their chase, running at a human pace because they could smell her sweating as she ran from them, and enjoyed the thrill of the chase. While these weren't the manipulative, torturous, Christian demons she was wont to encounter back in America, they were still plenty dangerous.

More so because they weren't doing for any purpose besides enjoyment, and couldn't be reasoned with.

The _yōkai_ chasing her in a group of three—one is a small green elf-like thing that vaguely resembles a knat, another is a far larger centipede-like creature around the size of a wolf, and the third is a flying dog head. A _flying dog head that was rabid and foaming at the mouth_.

She was never going to be able to trust dogs again. And now she had a permanent fear of bugs.

Liz reached into her bag and grabs a handful of salt, throwing it behind her in an arc. She does it again, and again, until she hears the creatures hissing in pain.

They can't cross the line of salt, and she sighs in relief. She still has no idea how to kill them off, but she'll be fine as long as she gets back to the shrine. The _miko_ could probably exorcise them, and she was damned if she would die because of some weak monster and leave Adam on his own in a foreign country.

She wondered if she was acting the way John had, dragging Adam on hunts, and leaving him alone all the time when she should be caring for him. She grimaced. She wasn't even just dragging him cross-country—she was doing it internationally.

She'd try to take a break, and spend more time with her little brother. He needed a family. But first she needed to get back to the shrine.

Suddenly, the wind around Liz picks up, leaves flying everywhere. _Shit._ The salt lines.

But though they're starting to get blown away, the three _yōkai_ aren't coming any closer. In fact, they seem to be…cowering. They're afraid. Of what?

A man appears in front of her. Or, at least, what looks like a man from the behind if one ignores the huge black wings on his back.

"LEAVE!" His voice booms, echoing through the trees, the winds becoming even stronger—Liz worries that _she'll_ be blown away. The _yōkai_ are gone the instant the man speaks, and that instant is when the growing storm finally calms down.

She sighs in relief, then remembers that she has no idea what this is, or even if it's friendly. Her hand slips inside her bag again.

"I am not here to harm you," the thing says, turning towards her. Liz gapes—it has a beak! It's speaking through a _beak_. She runs through her mind for what type of creature this is, and finally hits jackpot.

" _Tengu_ ," she breathes. A guardian-type spirit-like creature, known to live in the mountains and forests of Japan.

The _tengu_ seems approving of her reaction. It's likely a he, with the masculine facial features, and he has dark eyes and long black hair, braided. He's wearing kimono-like clothing—the type of thing she sees the _mikos_ and _onmyōji_ wear, but in black and red rather than white and red.

"Why are you here?" It asks. "You should not be here."

She grimaces. "I'm leaving now," she says, raising her hands in a peace gesture. Then she pauses. Now is not the time to sate intellectual curiosity. She still can't help it.

"How are you speaking English?" She asks.

He seems almost amused. "I am not. Nor are you, _tenchī no kō_. You speak the language of the otherworldly. You see the otherworldly for what it truly is."

Liz has no idea what to say to that. She can see and hear a demon's true form, sure, but this a little much for her.

"What does _tenchī no kō_ mean?" she asks, instead. She should probably be running back to the shrine now, but this creature has her interest. The only powerful winged supernatural beings she knows of are angels, and their wings aren't even visible. And this is the first intelligent supernatural being she's met so far in her global roadtrip.

"Child of Heaven and Earth," the _tengu_ says. The amused tone is even stronger in his voice. She has the feeling he sees her the way one sees a small child. She ignores the defensiveness that rises up in her at that.

"What's your name?" The _tengu_ actually laughs at that.

"A very curious human, you are. Pity that the Westerners have claimed you, we would have done far better." He says Westerners with extreme distaste.

"I am Daranibō, _daitengu_ of Mt. Fuji."

She blinks. She's fairly sure that means that he's high-ranking, or something. He turns, about to leave, when Liz bursts out, "Wait!"

Daranibō pauses, looking at her questioningly. "Uh—am I gonna see you again?"

When the _daitengu_ speaks, there's definitely laughter in his voice. Liz flushes.

"Only if you wish to," he replies, and is gone in a burst of wind.


	24. Interlude: Faeries

Adam hates Ireland. He hates Ireland with a _passion_. He and Liz had spent just two months in the damned country and this was the _third_ time he'd gotten kidnapped by faeries.

Who knew _faeries_ of all things could so annoying? He really wishes Liz would stop pissing off the little monsters. He would fall asleep and the next morning he'd wake up in an ethereal garden surrounded by flitting pixies.

The first time he'd been amazed—the place was beautiful, after all. The second time he'd been worried—Liz was off hunting something, so she'd have no idea where he'd gone. She had rescued him, in the end, of course, but now…

He's tired of getting kidnapped by supernatural creatures as bait for his older sister, and having to always wait to get rescued.

Luckily, he'd gone to sleep with pouches of salt in his pockets. And an iron cross on his silver rosary.

He pulls a pouch out of his pocket and rips it open, spraying it all over the faeries. They look at him with identical grimaces—and he promptly avoids looking at them, because they're basically all naked miniature women and he's a hormonal prepubescent boy and yeah, not thinking about that anymore.

He holds up the iron cross in between the faeries and him as he begins to inch away from them. They're too busy counting to notice.

"Tell me how to get out of this place, or I'll one of you with this thing!"

Okay, so he's clearly bluffing, but he just hopes the pixies don't call him out on it. They don't—in fact, they look almost afraid of him. That's good. One of them waves a hand quickly, and a glowing white hole opens behind Adam.

It chitters at him with irritation and points at the portal. He gets the message, and jumps through.

He sighs when he realizes he's on his bed, in the small apartment Liz had rented.

Adam is _never_ coming back to Ireland _, ever again._


	25. Vědmák

Liz carefully sits down in front of the Vědmák. She knew that witches, male or female, were usually extremely 'skeevy', as Dean would put it, though warlocks weren't nearly as bad, but this was the first she'd heard of this type of warlock.

He'd said that he meant her no harm, and that he only wished to tell her something.

Liz had learned to not judge all supernatural creatures by the same cover on her trip—that view had made her practically despised among Chinese spirits, where she'd earned the title of _Shénshāshǒu_ , Godkiller, for getting rid of tons of minor gods that had been annoying the people of minor villages.

She was never going to China again, after _that_ debacle.

The Vědmák nods to her, white beaded hair clinging together.

"You are Elizabeth Winchester," he says in a heavily accented voice. It isn't a question, but a statement, which is unsettling.

"I am Nochnoy Motylek. The spirits have spoken to me, told me you would appear here. I will aid you in disposing of the _rusalka_ plaguing this village," he continues.

"Wait," Liz interrupts him. "Why? I can do it on my own."

"Do not interrupt me," Nochnoy Motylek says. "I am immune to its enchantments. I am to tell you to leave, and give you a prophecy."

Liz feels out of her depth again, in a way she hasn't felt for a while. She's been through a lot, since she left America, and even Adam has become far different from the wary street kid he'd been when she'd picked him up.

He actually messes with faeries on a daily basis, and has no trouble on a vampire hunt. When she'd first picked him up, he hadn't even believed in ghosts.

She swallows nervously, and nods at the Vědmák. "Alright. What do you mean, prophecy?"

He looks her straight in the eye, and his blue eyes are red—not completely red, like a crossroads demon, but simply red irises with no pupils. It's eerie.

When he speaks, there are far too many nuances in his voice—a child's, an old man's, a young woman's.

" _Child of another realm_ ,

 _Born with the sword and serpent,_

 _Changer of fate, maker of destinies,_

 _She who will defeat the morning star,_

 _And cage the good son, the fall of man,_

 _Walks among magic, touched by sprits,_

 _Loved by the fallen, held by Thursday_

 _Blessed be, girl who Sees."_

Liz is awed with shock. She can see the other spirits rising behind the man as he speaks, and the words he says are…shocking. She doesn't know what to think.

Nochnoy Motylek suddenly hunches over and gasps, breathing heavily. Liz moves to aid him, but he holds a hand up.

"Leave this place now. I will take care of the _rusalka_ ," he says. "I do not wish to see you again. You bring visions of flames and destruction."

Liz feels a chill at those words, and nods quickly.

Russia has just been added to the list of countries she won't be returning to.


	26. Crumpets

Liz likes Britain. Though there aren't many hunters there, it's still a fairly peaceful place.

It's a place she can enjoy sitting in a café with Adam.

"Why are we here again?" He says to her with irritation. She frowns at him.

"Because we've been doing nothing but hunting recently, and I need a break," she replies.

"But there's a nest of vampi—"

"No," Liz says. She puts a finger to his lips. "Shush. Eat your crumpets. Drink your tea."

He looks at the food with unveiled disgust. "I know we're in England, but did you really need to make us eat this?"

"It's not _that_ bad," she protests. He gives her a bitchface—because apparently all Winchesters have the damn thing—and she winces as she takes a bite. The food is way too dry.

"Okay, so maybe it is," she concedes. But she still makes him eat it, because she's vindictive like that.

She misses when Adam wasn't fourteen and a teenager that refutes everything she says. This is revenge for all the "But this"'s and "But that"'s she's been getting recently.

"I'll get you a cake later," she says, because okay, she's weak to his puppy eyes, and he grins at her.

"But I'm still passing that vampire case to some other hunter." She needs to assert her dominance somehow— _she's_ the adult here, not him.

Adam grumbles irritably, and Liz grins.


	27. Layqa

Liz places her hand on her forehead. She has just had yet another argument with Adam.

"Elizabeth?" It's the nice woman that generously allowed Lizzy and Adam to stay with her while they visited Peru. She speaks English but her accent is strong, to the point where it sounds more like 'Elizebet'.

Liz smiles at her. "I told you, Lizzy is okay."

The woman smiles back. "Then I insist you call me Azucena."

Azucena is holding a bowl-like glass plate—in it is a dark, somewhat violet liquid, with dried fruit floating in it. The Liz of four years ago would have balked at eating foreign food made of unknown ingredients.

Now, though, she's used to it—she's actually kind of developed an exotic taste. Strong foods are good, too.

She takes the bowl from Azucena, along with a wooden spoon, and takes a spoonful of the purplish liquid. It's good—tastes a bit like the blackberry pudding she had in England.

Liz suddenly find she's ravenous, very hungry, and she eats like a madwoman. The bowl is clean in seconds, and Liz looks at Azucena with wide eyes. "What _was_ that!? It was delicious!"

" _Mazamorra morada_ —you would know it as purple corn pudding?" Azucena's brown eyes sparkle at the praise.

Liz grins at her, then sets down the bowl. She's about to reply to her, when suddenly she hears the loud sound of running.

She gets up quickly, looking apologetically at Azucena—except Azucena looks pissed.

What the hell?

Liz follows the sound of the footfalls and finds—"Adam!?"

Adam barrels into her, both of them falling onto the ground in a heap. Lizzy doesn't stay down for long, quickly getting up.

"Adam, what the hell are you—"

"Leopard!" He says with a gasp of breath. "There's a fucking leopard chasing me!"

"What—" But that's when Liz sees the giant wildcat after them.

"That's not a leopard, that's a jaguar!" She exclaims, as she grabs Adam's arm and pulls him up quickly. "Come on, we have to find Azucena!"

"No!" Adam says. "No, you—"

Suddenly, the jaguar stops chasing them—it stands completely still, and Liz can hear the footsteps from behind it. Someone is walking towards them, and from behind the jaguar appears—

"Azucena?" The woman, who'd been smiling before, sneers at her now.

"Che. _Hunters_." She says the word with disgust, and Liz blinks in surprise. She's rarely caught this offguard. "Stupid little boy, messing up my sacrifice."

Adam sneers back at her. "Like I was gonna let you feed Liz to some pagan god!"

"Some pagan god!?" Azucena rages, but before she can continue, Liz interrupts.

"What the fuck is going on, Adam?" He points to Azucena in response.

"That lady's a witch. A _layqa_ or something—the food she was giving you was enchanted. It was why we kept fighting with each other." He looks at her pleadingly, as if trying to make her understand he didn't mean any of what he's been saying to her recently.

And for the first time in a while, Liz's head is completely clear. She gets why the food made her so ravenous now, and why she was so, well, _attracted_ , to Azucena, to the point where she let the lady call her _Lizzy_ , and she glares at Azucena. "How'd you know, Adam?"

"The village people," and Liz gets it now. No wonder they had told her to stay away from the woman who lived in the woods. They were trying to warn her, and she'd fallen for Azucena's helpless woman act.

"No matter," Azucena says. "The sacrifice does not need to be a woman, and scrawny boy will do."

She grins malevolently, showing all her teeth, and Lizzy doesn't hesitate in pulling out her gun—only to find it's not there. Crap—she let her guard too far down. Azucena holds up the gun.

But Liz is nothing if not thorough, and she stands protectively in front of Adam as one hand reaches under the back of her shirt, under her bra strap.

She shoots just as Azucena starts chanting, but the witch stands, even as the blood drips down her tan gown. Liz gestures to Adam—they both run.

Azucena is too absorbed in her chanting to follow.

"How do we kill her?" Liz asks Adam as they run, and Adam shakes his head.

"The villagers would've already gotten rid of her if they knew."

She sighs. "Kill it with fire?" She offers.

"Do you see a flamethrower anywhere?" Adam deadpans.

"No," Liz says, "but I've got a lighter, I've got oil, and I've got salt." She pulls out the items as she lists them.

Adam looks at her. "If this doesn't work, we're finding some way to get out of this country, pronto. I don't care if I have to summon a fucking faery to do it."

Liz nods. If the faeries don't respond, she can always call in that one favor Daranibō owes her.

Liz finds it a bit funny, the fact that this is her life now, fighting Peruvian witches with Irish fae and Japanese _yōkai._ Just another day in the life of an international hunter, she supposes.


	28. Returning

During her time abroad, there's only one time she and Adam return to America, and that's just a little after the time she knows that Dean has already taken Sammy out of college to look for John. Or at least, with all the changes she's made, she assumes he has.

She's there to dispatch a shifter that's slowly nearing St. Louis before it causes any actual trouble. It could be anyone, she knows, but the reports in Clayton so far have the same pattern: people showing up beaten to death, and their spouses being caught on camera as the suspects, while they insist with camera evidence that they were in a completely different place—the doppelganger problem.

It helps that in the camera footage she hacks into—bless her intelligent little brothers, Sammy and Max both, for being generous enough to teach her their security-breaking ways—shows the person doing the beating. One time, they take a short, bloodthirsty glance at the camera, and Liz can see silver eyes gleaming in the dark, and—ah, there it is. Found the bastard.

From her now very faint memories of _before_ , she _does_ remember St. Louis—as the place where not-her-Dean 'died,' and the FBI first began to really track them. If she kills the shapeshifter before it gets there, even if the FBI do catch on to her little brothers' trails later on, there'll be less evidence to hold them on.

At least, no cases of abuse.

Liz remembers that some girl who was Sam's friend had called for the case, and shape-shifter Dean had attacked her, and then the cops had found the dead body of shapeshifter-Dean after Dean had shot it.

In any case, she knows she needs to go quickly, but she doesn't go immediately. First she goes to see Max. She's sorely tempted to sneak into his apartment, just to see if he'll have the same reaction to her as not-her-Sammy did to Dean in the _before_ , but she thinks better of it.

She's already bad enough an influence on Adam, she doesn't need to make it worse.

Max is living in an apartment alone, which saddens her a little—she'd been hoping he'd a least get a girlfriend. His doorbell makes a short _ding!_ Sound, and the door opens fairly quickly. A harried-looking Max stares at Liz with obvious shock, then looks confusedly at Adam behind her.

Liz has told Adam about his other brothers, so she knows he isn't surprised by this visit. But he looks sorely unimpressed by Max, and Liz wonders if this is going to be a problem. She hopes not.

"Hello, Max," she says. Max just stares. Liz raises an eyebrow. "Not going to invite me in?"

"Ah," is all he says before he opens the door wider and stands to the side, letting her and Adam in.

The apartment isn't really large, and the living room consists of a large, patchy couch, and boxy old television, and papers scattered all over the work desk in the corner, which also has a boxy computer on it.

"Uh," Max says. "You can sit, I guess." Liz nods, and motions for Adam to sit as she follows suit.

Max fidgets. "Water?" He offers. Liz shakes her head, Adam doesn't respond.

"Max," Liz says, "how are you doing? Sammy?"

Max seems very uncomfortable. "Sam's…with Dean. Hunting." So Liz's assumption was right. That made things a lot easier.

"I stayed." He doesn't meet Liz's eyes. Liz smiles at him.

"It's okay," she says, even as Adam snorts. She whips her head around quickly, glaring at him. He doesn't look at her, folding his arms petulantly.

"Hunting isn't something anyone should _want_ to do. If you want out, Max, it's alright." Unspoken are the words, _I wish I could get out too_. Because even though Liz had thrown herself into hunting with enthusiasm, the monotony of her old life—which she could barely remember, now—was something she longed for in spades.

Her family here, though, wasn't something she'd trade for anything. They were precious, so much dearer to her than her old family had been.

Max looks relieved at her words, but he's still tense. "What's wrong?" Liz asks.

He seems hesitant, but finally sighs, and says, "It's Sam. He's…"

He doesn't speak for a moment. "Why he's with Dean…his girlfriend here. Four years—her name was Jamie Manson—she's—she's dead. _That thing_ killed her. Burned—on the ceiling." Max's voice has developed a choked sort of quality, and Liz knows exactly why, the same way she knows what the emphasis he puts on the words 'that thing' means.

It's the yellow-eyed demon—Azazel, she remembers. And he was right, all those years ago. It honestly hadn't mattered. No matter who the girl had been, the demons had been planning the same thing. She wishes she hadn't been right.

"What was she like?" Liz asks quietly.

"Strawberry blonde, hazel eyes," Max says quietly. "Freckles. She was nice, but really scary when she was angry." He laughs bitterly. "She didn't deserve to die. She didn't deserve to get involved in this," he waves his hand around, "our crap."

Liz gets a chill—she doesn't like this bitter, depreciating Max. It reminds her too much of who he could've been. "Max," she says softly.

"I know," he says. "Not our fault, the demon's." The statement holds no conviction.

They fall into a dark silence. Finally, after a while, Adam is the one to break it.

"Are you gonna stay here?" He says, his voice holding a trace of harshness in it.

Max doesn't respond to him. Instead, he looks questioningly at Liz. "Why do you have a kid with you?"

"He's the half-brother John fathered but never knew about," she responds, and Max's eyebrows fly into his hairline.

"Are we talking about the same John Winchester? You know, the one that's on a violent crusade for his one and only _dead_ true love?" Liz smiles, but it comes out as more of a grimace, and nods. Max shakes his head. "And he's been with you this whole time?" She nods.

His eyes narrow. "You taught him to hunt?"

"He's a Winchester," she says. "If I hadn't, he'd be dead. And he's got no other family—I found him after he ran away from foster care." Max winces.

"Alright," he nods. "I'm not hunting anymore—I'm staying here. Normal life. I'm—"

"I'm tired, Lizzy," he says, his shoulders slumping. Liz doesn't say anything, just nods.

"Come on, Adam," she says. "Let's see how well you can impersonate a nerdy high schooler."

Adam watches Max, his expression neutral. When they leave the apartment, he speaks up.

"Are all of our brothers like that?" _So broken,_ his eyes say, _so depressed._

Liz smiles depreciatingly at him. "Hunting does that," she says.

He frowns at her. "But you…"

She grins at him. "I'm just better at hiding it, Ads."

"I won't be like that."

 _No_ , Liz thinks. _You won't_. _Because I'll protect you._

 _AN: This chapter was supposed to be about fighting shapeshifters. Oops. Please leave reviews on how shitty this story is, on a scale of Pristine to the Inside of a Toilet Bowl. Also, yay, new SPN episode!_


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